Just F*cking Do It

I used to play this game when I was younger. It was called ‘I have never …’. It usually involved a few friends and a bottle of some cheap booze I’d bought on a trip abroad, for less than 5 euros, and which tasted of methanol. The rules of the game are simple. Each player is armed with a drink and has a chance to make a statement that starts with ‘I have never’ followed by something inappropriate that they have done. Then, if anyone else has also done it, they have to take a gulp of drink. The result is a bunch of drunk, giggly girls who have uncovered their deepest secrets.

Well, I’ve realized there is a new game we play as adults. It is the ‘I could never …’ game but in this version we reveal our deepest limiting beliefs. The ‘I could never …’ game keeps us in a place of staying small and away from living our true potential. For example:

• ‘I could never give up sugar’ keeps you unhealthy.

• ‘I could never leave my job’ keeps you unhappy.

• ‘I could never leave my partner’ keeps you in a toxic relationship.

• ‘I could never start that business’ keeps you away from your dreams.

You get the gist.

When I became aware that I was playing the ‘I could never …’ game in my life, I decided it was time to change. Where in your life are you playing this game? As we explored earlier in the book, the beliefs you have formed are creating stories that are limiting you. Changing engrained thought patterns after a decade of conditioning is no easy feat, but using the power of your words to help you along the way is crucial and that is what this chapter is all about.

Words, I want you to understand, are potent. Your internal and external dialogue is casting spells over your life: sometimes it can be good magic, but it can also be very, very black magic indeed.

After realizing that I was playing the ‘I could never …’ game, I became fascinated with understanding how the power of our words and being optimistic versus pessimistic affects our life. Studies have shown that when we say something enough times (internally or externally), we begin to believe it. What comes out of your mouth shapes how you feel … which defines your actions … which has an effect on your outcomes.

The art of hope

I had spent years convincing myself that my life was cursed and, quite honestly, I got so good at being dramatic and shamelessly pulling out the victim card that I wasn’t sure how I could change. Richard Bach said, ‘Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.’

So, when I got into my late twenties and first started dipping my toe into the personal development world and was told that you could prime yourself to cultivate the bright side of life, I was sceptical. Surely, if you could choose to be positive, then everyone would do that?

Well, no.

Perhaps, like me, you have tended to focus on the darker aspects of life, thinking primarily of the worst thing that could happen when you are about to pursue a new business venture or embark on a new relationship. I used to tell myself that New Year’s Eve was a cursed night of the year and that things would always go wrong: I have had the heartbreak of being dumped on that night three times to prove that what you believe will happen will happen. I had primed myself to be on the lookout for things going wrong, so the Universe always delivered. Remember, your thoughts become things, and I was manifesting like a mofo but for all the wrong reasons and in all the wrong ways.

Maybe, like me, you have assumed that you’ll never get the body you are working towards very early in a new diet or exercise regime. Maybe the idea that things will not work out has stopped you from even trying a new relationship. And perhaps past failures have proved that you were right in thinking such things could never work, which is why you are a willing player in the ‘I could never …’ game. As I’ve said before, our minds are designed not to keep us happy but to keep us safe. This means that you are naturally more likely to look for the risks that may hold you back rather than the rewards that will pull you forward.

But let’s be real here: in the modern world that most of us live in, we aren’t that likely to be ravaged by tigers while doing the weekly grocery shop or bludgeoned by bears en route to the yoga class. It seems like a waste of time and energy to always be carrying out risk assessments.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s useful in certain situations. For example, I wish I’d risk-assessed before grabbing the microphone at my wedding and blurting out expletives at anyone who wouldn’t get on the dance floor – it proved an efficient way of alienating my whole new family only an hour after tying the knot. But it’s not so useful as your de facto state of thinking. Why? Because negative thinking leads to negative talk and negative talk almost always leads to negative behaviours.

However, the American psychologist Martin Seligman dared to suggest that new behaviours could be learned by anyone if they employed new cognitive strategies; that is, if you make a habit out of new ways of thinking and talking, you can reverse a pessimistic mindset. Seligman shows that how you explain the situations and challenges you face (both current and future) determines whether you are a half-full or half-empty type of person. This means that, if you change the way that you explain the things that happen to you, then your de facto position can shift from pessimistic to optimistic.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary neatly defines optimism as ‘hopefulness and confidence about the future or the success of something’. In contrast, its definition of pessimism is ‘a tendency to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen’.

Seligman suggests that you need to study the internal chatter happening inside your own head in order to determine your overall attitude towards life. So, if you learn to consistently change your internal dialogue – or, as Seligman calls it, your explanatory style – then you learn to remain consistently optimistic.

I didn’t think I was pessimistic until I took a huge microscope to my conversation, internal and external, and although I had a bubbly disposition, the way I spoke quickly indicated that I was far more pessimistic than I would ever have imagined. I had some serious work to do. From a spiritual perspective, when we change our dialogue, we change our vibe – and by this point in this book, people, you should be super-clear on the result of changing your vibe. How you think about an event determines how you react to it. And how you react to it determines the outcome you get.

Powerfully, how you think about a past event actually determines how you react to future events and so shapes the general tone of your life experience. If you have come from a series of failed relationships, you are more than likely going to take those experiences, make sense of them in a negative way and then subconsciously inscribe the view that all your future relationships won’t work. This is an irrational and damaging way of thinking because you have the power to totally change all your future relationships and manifest a long-lasting, happy and fulfilling relationship if you choose to believe and think positively.

The three Ps

There are three dimensions to consider when deciding where you are on the attitude scale:

• Permanence

• Pervasiveness

• Personalization

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

Permanence

The first is how permanent you consider situations to be. One of my favourites was ‘Diets never work’. As you can see, this is pretty pessimistic as I was using the word ‘never’. Believing that bad events will persist and thinking about bad things in terms of ‘always’ and ‘never’ indicates that you have a pessimistic explanatory style.

An optimist would see the level of permanence in a much less absolute way, as a temporary setback, so might say, ‘Diets never work when I eat out’. As you can see, the optimist reacts to the situation with a sense of personal power and isolates the timeframe to when they go out for dinner rather than all of the time. What’s really important is that you understand the opposite also applies. Pessimistic people also see good things that happen as temporary. A pessimist may say things like ‘It’s my lucky day’, which would imply most other days are not.

I didn’t want to be pessimistic and, because it is the single biggest determinant of depression, I was happy to get rid of it. Pessimists react to setbacks under the assumption that they had no control over the event and take on a characteristic called ‘learned helplessness’, reacting to all events using the ‘I give up’ or the ‘No matter what I do, it all fails’ paradigm.

This learned helplessness becomes the automatic go-to gear, and, if left to run the show, can have devastating effects. Pessimists consider that bad events are inevitable, will last a long time, undermine everything they ever do and are due to an underlying weakness they have and cannot change. If you continually tell yourself there is no solution to a problem (pessimistic attitude), then the likelihood is that you will not fix it. It’s crucial to grasp that even the most optimistic people will feel momentarily helpless when something bad happens, but it’s the bounce-back-ability rate from the setback that separates a half-full type of person from the ‘my cup is always empty’ person.

Pervasiveness

The second dimension to consider when assessing how pessimistic you are is whether you think the setback is specific to that particular situation or not. This is referred to as pervasiveness. Some people can put their troubles away tidily into a box and get on with the rest of their lives, but others can’t.

ANNIE’S AND MATTHEW’S STORIES

Annie may have issues with her relationship but will put that away when she’s at work and will do well at her job. In contrast, Matthew will turn everything into a catastrophe. When there is one metaphorical cut in his life, it bleeds over everything. Matthew gives up on everything even if the failure has happened only in one area of his life. This is why learned helplessness is one of the strongest correlates of depression because it leaves you feeling constantly vulnerable, scared of being attacked and shuts you off from any opportunities for happiness.

Personalization

The last aspect of explanatory style and for determining how pessimistic you are is whether you decide a problem is internal or external. When bad things happen, we can blame ourselves or we can blame external influences. This is called personalization.

KEVIN’S STORY

Kevin constantly blamed himself that he was struggling to make his business a success. He would internalize the problem and blame it on his being stupid instead of figuring out a solution. This led him to have low self-esteem. Kevin would speak to himself as if he was speaking to his worst enemy.

It’s important to note, though, that we don’t want to be blaming others for what happens to us either, and that, from a spiritual perspective, we need to take full responsibility for our journey. So, I will add a caveat here: taking responsibility for a situation and blaming yourself are two very different things. Ultimately, you want to change and so it is imperative that you take on the responsibility for making that change but without taking it personally like Kevin.

Responsibility is your ability to respond to a challenge from a place of personal power and growth. Accepting failure as part of a learning curve is the secret to not internalizing things from a negative standpoint. Taking responsibility provides you with the opportunity to dig deep and find a solution from within, instead of blaming yourself.

So, as you can see, there’s magic and merit in learning how to whip off your pessimistic pants and slip on a sexy pair of positivity pants with all the trimmings and tassels. These pants will save you from the despair of seeing setbacks as permanent and challenges in life as catastrophes. Ultimately, wearing your positivity pants with pride and learning how to be optimistic is a superpower when it comes to creating your dream life.

Let’s get one thing clear: I am a big believer in speaking positively and the power of affirmations, but this doesn’t give you permission to blithely ignore the dangers of a future venture. You shouldn’t spend your life savings on a risky investment and use the rationale that it’s best to be optimistic or start a new business in an industry that you have no clue about just because you have created a set of affirmations. The power of learned optimism is in thinking about things that happen to you in a different way, which leads to you talking about them in a different way, which leads to different actions, which result in an alternative outcome. In essence, you are mastering the art of hope.

You got the power …

The words around you

In addition to changing the way you speak, it’s imperative that you take note of the words around you as these have a direct effect on how positive or negative your attitude is. One of the scariest things I started to notice was the amount of sheer pessimism and negativity I was surrounded with on a daily basis. Every time I put on the radio, there was news of another terrorist act. Every time I went on Facebook, there was someone else moaning about the dire state of politics. Every time I switched the TV on, there was another reality show that showcased more broken hearts and cheating partners. Everywhere I turned, there was an opportunity to see the world was a shitty place. I noticed the sheer amount of gossip people around me could engage in, the repetitive statements about how work was dull and the never-ending complaints that so many people were unhappy with their lives. It’s easy to see why depression is rife.

I got to thinking how different the world would be if the radio stations broadcast news that shared successes and celebrations instead of misery each hour. Humans, it seems, are obsessed with watching the pain of others. Isn’t it a little bit sick that we enjoy watching horror movies and dub this entertainment? And this comes from someone who used to love horror movies. On average, by the time a child is 14, they have seen at least five people killed on TV. Every time we watch those programmes, a low level of cortisol (the stress hormone) is released into our bloodstreams, meaning that we are in a constant state of low-level stress. This, in turn, has adverse effects on our health and body, and it also affects our energy and vibration.

One of the first things I did while on my quest to change my life was to stop listening to the news, stop watching any TV that made me sad or angry, and disconnect from anybody on Facebook who took the time to produce statuses which were negative. I also chose to remove myself from social situations where people preferred to gossip or bitch instead of engaging in meaningful conversation.

This conscious decision to be super-careful about what I let into my brain was, for me, a huge taking back of control. Some people judged me for this, saying that shutting myself off from the ‘real’ world was actually a kind of selfishness. But switching off the constant flow of negativity doesn’t mean that I don’t care about what’s happening. Quite the opposite: if we are in a negative state that is stopping us from reaching our full potential we certainly won’t be able to make a difference to the world’s problems.

Personally, too, this cleansing of my consciousness and the decision to shut off negativity from my life were liberating, resulting in my happiness rising, my income rocketing and my free time expanding so I could do more fulfilling things. What’s more, I didn’t want my children to be exposed to the horror of the world until they were a little older. I’d like them to bask in the ecstasy of being children for as long as they can.

TOP TAKEAWAYS

• Your internal and external dialogues are great indicators of how you go about life.

• You need to study the internal chatter that happens inside your own head in order to determine your overall attitude towards life – the American psychologist Martin Seligman calls it your ‘explanatory style’.

• There are three dimensions to consider when deciding where you are on the attitude scale: permanence, pervasiveness and personalization.

• Be aware of what you let into your space: the words around you are shaping your own dialogue.

• Being positive doesn’t mean being stupid or risk averse. It just means that you seek out every opportunity for growth and see every challenge through the lens of possibility.

JFDI!

Check your chatter

I want you to get an indication of how you speak to yourself. Grab a piece of paper, or use the notes section at the end of this book, as I have a little task for you.

I want you to think of one area of your life which you are not happy with – perhaps it’s your income, your physical health or your relationship. Whatever it is, hold the area of your life you are not happy with in your mind’s eye. Then I want you to say out loud, ‘It is not good enough.’

Now I want you to write down the words ‘This means I’m …’ and then complete the sentence. What does it mean to you that you aren’t earning enough, or your marriage is failing, or you have let yourself become overweight?

For example:

• ‘This means I’m a failure.’

• ‘This means I’m a loser.’

• ‘This means I’m letting my family down.’

• ‘This means I’m stupid.’

• ‘This means I’m not loveable.’

• ‘This means I’m lazy.’

• ‘This means I’m ugly.’

Write whatever comes into your mind.

It’s imperative that you allow yourself to write down everything that comes into your mind. The reason this task is so powerful is that it will help you start to recognize the negative self-talk and how damaging it is. Allow yourself to really feel the words that you write out.

Now look at your list and imagine that a little child is about to get up and perform the main role in a play, but finds themself ambushed by their teacher, who goes on to criticize every aspect of their acting. Why would that little child be happy and excited about performing after hearing they are a loser or a failure? Could they get on and give their best performance? Of course not, which is why negative self-talk is highly damaging and reinforces the negative connection to the bullshit beliefs you hold about yourself.

Now I want you to flip the switch and change all the negative self-talk you tell yourself into positive affirmations. If you keep telling yourself that you aren’t clever enough to start a business, then flip that to ‘I am an amazing business owner with all the intelligence I need’. Grab your phone and record each affirmation. I want you to repeat these positive affirmations seven times over. Then listen to them every morning and every night.